Most of the time, people on the trail are decent. Occasionally you meet someone who treats BLM land like their private off-road park and leaves fire rings made of truck tires. This one’s for everyone trying to not be that person.
Group runs at places like this exist because people before us treated public land well enough to keep it open. It’s a more fragile situation than it looks — access gets closed when enough small compromises add up to look like unmanaged impact. Land managers keep good records. Several trails across the Southwest that were open a decade ago aren’t anymore. The etiquette below is about making sure that list doesn’t get longer.
Leave What You Find, Carry Out What You Bring In
This shouldn’t need saying, but here we are. If you packed it in, pack it out — all of it. Food scraps, fuel canisters, gray water, everything. ‘I buried it’ isn’t an answer.
Historic artifacts — mining equipment, cabin ruins, old bottles — are protected under federal law. Don’t take them. Don’t move them. Leave them for the next person and the person after that.
The Trasharoo Principle
Camp Smart About Where You Stop
Camp on existing sites where they exist. On BLM and national forest land, dispersed camping is generally allowed, but that doesn’t mean drive until you find a nice patch of virgin desert and call it a campsite. Find spots that have already been used — that’s the point of ‘dispersed’ camping: spreading impact across established spots rather than concentrating it in new ones.
Two hundred feet from water sources, trails, and roads minimum. More is better. Fire restrictions vary by season — check current conditions at the relevant BLM field office before you go.
Organized runs with clear leadership, staged parking, and pre-run trail briefings are the model. They’re also how you keep a group of 10+ rigs from turning into a mess.
Trail Right of Way
Uphill traffic has right of way. If you’re descending a narrow trail and meet someone coming up, you back up or pull aside. A vehicle going uphill has less control in reverse and more exposure to sliding. The person going down can reverse more safely. This is a universal convention.
Slower or more technical vehicles set the pace on group runs. Nobody gets left behind, nobody gets pushed. If someone needs more time on a line, they get it. It’s not a race. Spotters are there for a reason — use them. And make sure your group has the recovery gear to handle a stuck rig without relying on someone else to bail you out.
At Camp
Keep generator hours reasonable. Nobody came to the desert to hear your generator at 11pm. The desert is quiet — that’s a feature, not a bug. If you’re sharing a camp area with other groups you didn’t come with, introduce yourself and give them their space.
On Public Lands Specifically
The General Principle
You’re a guest on public land, same as everyone else out there. Leave it in better shape than you found it. Don’t be the reason someone has a bad experience, and don’t be the reason a trail gets closed. If you’re looking for less-crowded spots where these rules are easier to practice, our hidden gems guide covers places worth seeking out.
That’s it. Not complicated. Just requires actually doing it.